Beyonce and Jay-Z Are Working on Mysterious New Material

You cannot stop the Carter family - but why in heaven's name would you want to?

It’s only been 38 days since the birth of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Wentz-haired Blue Ivy Carter, but if any of us thought maybe the most powerful couple in music might want to take a breather and enjoy some chill time (it’s not like superstardom comes with a crap maternity leave program), we were wrong.

Turns out, Bey and Jay can’t sit still. Reports began surfacing yesterday that the couple are each working on multiple projects. Of course, neither Mom nor Dad are commenting on their new work just yet, but everyone else seems to be doing quite a bit of it for them. Yesterday, OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder (who also counts songwriting credits on songs like Beyoncé’s "Halo," Kelly Clarkson’s "Already Gone," and Adele’s "Rumour Has It," the latter for which he just received an Album of the Year Grammy along with the rest of the 21 crew) told AOL’s BoomBox that he and Bey were already in the process of picking songs for not one but two new albums for 2012. He says he’s been pitching her "songs about parenthood" and that the new material will "play with sounds outside of…R&B" (which, we hope, doesn’t imply a children’s album — not to say we wouldn’t enjoy Bey singing us to sleep every night).

As for Jay, both ?uestlove and Pharrell Williams have been (literally) cornered by the press into divulging that they’re getting into projects with Hov. Pharrell sheepishly told MTV that, yes, he’s been working on something and "it’s crazy," whatever that means. Questo, too, called whatever "secret project" that’s been in the works between he and Jigga "real big," (via Hollywood.tv) and said it’d be coming out in the next few weeks. UPDATE: ?uestlove tweeted to alert the world the “secret” project was a reference to Jay’s two shows at Carnegie Hall… which already happened.

All the collaborators seemed fairly reticent on the subject of new material, which would imply that there’s something happening that they’re under pressure to shut up about, but all we know for sure is that, for the Carter family in 2012 — apart from playing Grammys hooky in exchange for a Brooklyn pizza date — there’s no such thing as a hiatus.

Around The Web \

Alessandro Cortini tends to surround himself with darkness. The Italian producer is most infamous as a torturer of modular synths and other bleak electronics for Los Angeles’ most famous industrial-goths, Nine Inch Nails. His previous solo LP, Sonno, slinked out on Prurient’s Hospital Productions — a bastion of the crepuscular, if there ever was one. And… More »